Anarchy, State, and Robert Nozick
How A Brilliant Philosopher Brought Libertarianism to Harvard
Bill Flanigen
4/10/07 | Book Reviews
Forty years ago—when non-Keynesian economists could only get employment at the University of Chicago, when Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek had not yet won their Nobel prizes, and when the Libertarian Party was in its infancy—libertarianism was unknown in the academy. Philosophically, liberalism was ascendant after John Rawls published his 500-page tome A Theory of Justice in 1971, which called for an extensive welfare state to ensure the proper redistribution of wealth throughout society. Politically, with the Vietnam War overseas and the War on Poverty at home, the “big government” legacy of the New Deal and World War II was alive and kicking. In that environment of hostility towards liberty, a young professor of philosophy at Harvard had the gall to declare himself a libertarian. Even worse, he had the nerve actually to write a book defending his beliefs.
Harvard’s Robert Nozick was, in fact, one of the most entertaining and enlightened philosophers in American history. This becomes evident in reading that book, with which his name will forever be connected: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (henceforth AS&U). It was his first book, published in 1974. AS&U is a delightful mix of hard logic with fun, and is a genius defense of libertarianism. “Is there really someone,” he asked, “who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people who constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?” Taking a serious position on the serious subject of political philosophy, Nozick proceeded to justify himself using Wilt Chamberlain, Doctor Seuss, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others.
Few works in philosophy reach broad popularity the way AS&U did. It won the National Book Award in 1975, helped to inspire the Matrix trilogy of movies, and even earned a short cameo in an episode of the HBO series “The Sopranos.” There are so many arguments and claims in AS&U that any summary of it is bound to overlook something important. However, the main element of his political philosophy is easily identifiable: his opposition to anything more than “the minimal state.” This state had the power to field an army, punish force and fraud, and enforce contracts. It should not, Nozick believed, do anything else. This is a radical suggestion, but Nozick defends it brilliantly.
His argument is based on the intuitive belief that all human beings own themselves. This “absolute self-ownership” entitles us to control over ourselves, freedom of contract, absolute civil liberty, and absolute property rights. It also requires that we respect the same right in other people. Drawing on the ideas of Immanuel Kant, Nozick argues that we are obliged to treat others as “ends and not means,” and we cannot demand that they pay our way through life without their permission.
The implications of this view are revolutionary: all redistributive taxes are immoral. Public schools, public roads, national parks, welfare programs, excises and duties on trade, minimum wage laws, rent control, corporate subsidies, public housing, zoning laws, and universal healthcare cannot be justified. He shows no interest—as economists do—in attacking these governmental intrusions based on their utility (or lack thereof). Free markets are not good because they make people wealthy. They are good because they are moral. In a college community full of students skeptical of the value of the market, such claims are heretical.
A full chapter of AS&U is devoted to attacking other theories of “distributive justice”—particularly John Rawls’ idea of “justice as fairness”—a system in which privately held wealth was redistributed in order to benefit the least well-off parties as much as the most well-off. Nozick reorients the discussion by focusing on the process by which people trade wealth. It did not bother him if inequality existed in a society, because he believed that what mattered was not the presence of inequality, but the process by which that inequality arose. Was that process justified (that is, free of coercion)? If so, the end result is simply irrelevant.
He illustrates this with his famous “Wilt Chamberlain example.” Imagine that a great basketball player (Chamberlain, or perhaps Lebron James) signs a contract with a basketball team such that one quarter of every ticket sold goes straight to his pocket. Now, imagine for a moment your ideal wealth distribution in society (let’s say you think that nobody should make less than $30,000 or more than $100,000). Imagine further that one million people within that distribution each pay one dollar to see James play basketball. He is now $250,000 richer.
You assented to the original distribution—how can you not assent to this one? In this way, Nozick attempts to show that we are all, intuitively, capitalists. What matters to us is the way people give and take wealth in voluntary exchange. Further, if we demand that those exchanges occur involuntarily (by, say, forcing James to pay more taxes because of his wealth), we are violating James’ right to absolute self-ownership. “The minimal state,” Nozick writes, “treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual rights with the dignity this constitutes.”
Like most libertarian intellectuals, Nozick was often called a conservative. Little could be further from the truth. Nozick viewed conservatism with the same hostility as liberalism. “[R]ight-wing people like the pro-free-market argument,” Nozick explained four years after writing AS&U, “but don’t like the arguments for individual liberty in cases like gay rights - although I view them as an interconnecting whole.” Our individual rights are not simply economic rights to property and low taxes. Rather, we also have civil liberties the government may not trample. Laws against sodomy, obscenity and drugs all violate the principle of self-ownership. Consistency demands that self-ownership apply to the civil sphere as well as the market. In areas like prostitution and drug use, it is hard even to tell precisely where the market sphere ends and the civil sphere begins.
There is an often overlooked division between libertarians and conservatives over the justification for capitalism. “Nozickian” libertarians support it on philosophical grounds as the expression of a just underlying principle of self-ownership. Self-owning people are free to exchange whatever they want (food, clothing, drugs, sex, pornography, subversive materials, etc.) for whatever price to which they can agree. For conservatives, the free market is no absolute good, but is desirable only when limited by strict public morality. Any conservative philosophical argument for capitalism, when formulated, will be substantially different from that offered by Nozick.
Nozick’s beliefs were neither conservative nor liberal. More refreshing than his unique political opinions, though, was Nozick’s ability to approach the subject of philosophy in a different way—as more of a joyful exploration than a taxing exercise. He practiced philosophy like he actually enjoyed it. Often, he would raise questions without even pretending to be able to answer them. He would admit where his arguments were incomplete, where he was unsure about them, or where he wished he had the time to explore them further. “There is room,” he wrote in the introduction to AS&U, “for words other than last words.”
By the time of his death from stomach cancer in 2002, Nozick had retreated from some of his more extreme conclusions, though he remained a libertarian. In the world of liberal academia, that perseverance was no small feat. Nozick’s theories were not popular with his colleagues. His work attracted considerable criticism from well-known philosophers like Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams. Even this, though, is proof of his success at bringing libertarian ideas into the mainstream intellectual conversation. Fellow libertarian Richard Epstein explained this in an obituary, written for National Review: “[T]he frequency and severity of the attacks on Anarchy, State, and Utopia only provide further evidence of his richness and profundity. If the book had been refuted but once, it would have counted for little. That it has been ‘refuted’ countless times proves that he is the author of one of the enduring classics of political philosophy. To be a Nozickian stands for something.”
Nozick was not the only libertarian scholar, but he was certainly one of the most intelligent, and most important. At one time, libertarianism sat on the fringes of the academic community—thanks in part to Robert Nozick and Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the libertarian community now has a foothold in the world of philosophical respectability, and an inspiring philosophical theory to call their own.
Bill Flanigen is a sophomore majoring in history.
Harvard’s Robert Nozick was, in fact, one of the most entertaining and enlightened philosophers in American history. This becomes evident in reading that book, with which his name will forever be connected: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (henceforth AS&U). It was his first book, published in 1974. AS&U is a delightful mix of hard logic with fun, and is a genius defense of libertarianism. “Is there really someone,” he asked, “who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people who constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?” Taking a serious position on the serious subject of political philosophy, Nozick proceeded to justify himself using Wilt Chamberlain, Doctor Seuss, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others.
Few works in philosophy reach broad popularity the way AS&U did. It won the National Book Award in 1975, helped to inspire the Matrix trilogy of movies, and even earned a short cameo in an episode of the HBO series “The Sopranos.” There are so many arguments and claims in AS&U that any summary of it is bound to overlook something important. However, the main element of his political philosophy is easily identifiable: his opposition to anything more than “the minimal state.” This state had the power to field an army, punish force and fraud, and enforce contracts. It should not, Nozick believed, do anything else. This is a radical suggestion, but Nozick defends it brilliantly.
His argument is based on the intuitive belief that all human beings own themselves. This “absolute self-ownership” entitles us to control over ourselves, freedom of contract, absolute civil liberty, and absolute property rights. It also requires that we respect the same right in other people. Drawing on the ideas of Immanuel Kant, Nozick argues that we are obliged to treat others as “ends and not means,” and we cannot demand that they pay our way through life without their permission.
The implications of this view are revolutionary: all redistributive taxes are immoral. Public schools, public roads, national parks, welfare programs, excises and duties on trade, minimum wage laws, rent control, corporate subsidies, public housing, zoning laws, and universal healthcare cannot be justified. He shows no interest—as economists do—in attacking these governmental intrusions based on their utility (or lack thereof). Free markets are not good because they make people wealthy. They are good because they are moral. In a college community full of students skeptical of the value of the market, such claims are heretical.
A full chapter of AS&U is devoted to attacking other theories of “distributive justice”—particularly John Rawls’ idea of “justice as fairness”—a system in which privately held wealth was redistributed in order to benefit the least well-off parties as much as the most well-off. Nozick reorients the discussion by focusing on the process by which people trade wealth. It did not bother him if inequality existed in a society, because he believed that what mattered was not the presence of inequality, but the process by which that inequality arose. Was that process justified (that is, free of coercion)? If so, the end result is simply irrelevant.
He illustrates this with his famous “Wilt Chamberlain example.” Imagine that a great basketball player (Chamberlain, or perhaps Lebron James) signs a contract with a basketball team such that one quarter of every ticket sold goes straight to his pocket. Now, imagine for a moment your ideal wealth distribution in society (let’s say you think that nobody should make less than $30,000 or more than $100,000). Imagine further that one million people within that distribution each pay one dollar to see James play basketball. He is now $250,000 richer.
You assented to the original distribution—how can you not assent to this one? In this way, Nozick attempts to show that we are all, intuitively, capitalists. What matters to us is the way people give and take wealth in voluntary exchange. Further, if we demand that those exchanges occur involuntarily (by, say, forcing James to pay more taxes because of his wealth), we are violating James’ right to absolute self-ownership. “The minimal state,” Nozick writes, “treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual rights with the dignity this constitutes.”
Like most libertarian intellectuals, Nozick was often called a conservative. Little could be further from the truth. Nozick viewed conservatism with the same hostility as liberalism. “[R]ight-wing people like the pro-free-market argument,” Nozick explained four years after writing AS&U, “but don’t like the arguments for individual liberty in cases like gay rights - although I view them as an interconnecting whole.” Our individual rights are not simply economic rights to property and low taxes. Rather, we also have civil liberties the government may not trample. Laws against sodomy, obscenity and drugs all violate the principle of self-ownership. Consistency demands that self-ownership apply to the civil sphere as well as the market. In areas like prostitution and drug use, it is hard even to tell precisely where the market sphere ends and the civil sphere begins.
There is an often overlooked division between libertarians and conservatives over the justification for capitalism. “Nozickian” libertarians support it on philosophical grounds as the expression of a just underlying principle of self-ownership. Self-owning people are free to exchange whatever they want (food, clothing, drugs, sex, pornography, subversive materials, etc.) for whatever price to which they can agree. For conservatives, the free market is no absolute good, but is desirable only when limited by strict public morality. Any conservative philosophical argument for capitalism, when formulated, will be substantially different from that offered by Nozick.
Nozick’s beliefs were neither conservative nor liberal. More refreshing than his unique political opinions, though, was Nozick’s ability to approach the subject of philosophy in a different way—as more of a joyful exploration than a taxing exercise. He practiced philosophy like he actually enjoyed it. Often, he would raise questions without even pretending to be able to answer them. He would admit where his arguments were incomplete, where he was unsure about them, or where he wished he had the time to explore them further. “There is room,” he wrote in the introduction to AS&U, “for words other than last words.”
By the time of his death from stomach cancer in 2002, Nozick had retreated from some of his more extreme conclusions, though he remained a libertarian. In the world of liberal academia, that perseverance was no small feat. Nozick’s theories were not popular with his colleagues. His work attracted considerable criticism from well-known philosophers like Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams. Even this, though, is proof of his success at bringing libertarian ideas into the mainstream intellectual conversation. Fellow libertarian Richard Epstein explained this in an obituary, written for National Review: “[T]he frequency and severity of the attacks on Anarchy, State, and Utopia only provide further evidence of his richness and profundity. If the book had been refuted but once, it would have counted for little. That it has been ‘refuted’ countless times proves that he is the author of one of the enduring classics of political philosophy. To be a Nozickian stands for something.”
Nozick was not the only libertarian scholar, but he was certainly one of the most intelligent, and most important. At one time, libertarianism sat on the fringes of the academic community—thanks in part to Robert Nozick and Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the libertarian community now has a foothold in the world of philosophical respectability, and an inspiring philosophical theory to call their own.
Bill Flanigen is a sophomore majoring in history.
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